Gina Maffei (1921-2018) - Ombre azzurre sulla spiaggia

"Blue Shadows on the Beach" Informal work by the Italian artist Gina MAFFEI (Trento 1921 - Castano Primo 2018). Oil on panel, measure 40x50 (frame 46x56), signed on the right as in the photo. Titled and signed on the back as in the photo, frame as in the photo.

Gina MAFFEI, born in Trento in 1921 to Umberto and Ida Tomasi and raised in a large family. After obtaining her diploma at the Magistral Institute, she continued her studies at the Academy of Fine Arts in Venice, where among her teachers she had Guido Cadorin, Armando Pizzinato and Afro Basaldella. In the lagoon she also met her future husband, the Milanese painter Piero Giunni (Villa Cortese 1912 – Bondone 2000), with whom she began an artistic partnership that lasted for life. In 1946 the two moved to Milan and Gina began to exhibit in important venues, such as the Sixth Rome Quadriennale of 1951, benefiting from encouragement publicly expressed by Renato Birolli. In the meantime Piero was securing the consensus with which critics had welcomed his painting. From the sixties they were both a constant presence at group exhibitions staged in Lombardy and in various Italian cities.

In 1967 Gina held her first personal exhibition in Riva del Garda, followed by many other shows, which were reviewed in the period press by distinguished critics such as Mario De Micheli and Raffaele De Grada. In Trentino she exhibited again in 1969 at the Delfino Gallery in Rovereto and in 1981 at the Fratelli Bronzetti Center in Trento.

Many subjects of her paintings are inspired by the surroundings of Bondone, the small town in the Val di Chiese that the couple frequented during the summer months since the 1950s. Gina’s painting, especially landscapes, is of a clearly expressionist nature and always seems drawn to leaving figuration behind, ending in joyful explosions of color that recompose into decipherable visions of reality. In 1998, on the occasion of a new monographic exhibition at the Ponte Rosso Gallery in Milan, Marina De Stasio wrote: “The artist has lived in Milan for many years and the school of informal naturalism has certainly had some influence on her way of constructing the painting, of seeing and rendering reality; however, hers is certainly not Lombard painting: the Trentine origin, her studies at the Venice Academy, and the inspiration drawn from the Trentino landscape explain the palette, which is essentially Secessionist.”